Blockchain secures carbon credit transaction

Mar 15, 2017

African carbon credit supplier Aera Group and the Russian Carbon Fund have executed the first worldwide carbon credit transaction using blockchain.
The pilot transaction was executed yesterday (14 March) between the Russian Carbon Fund on the buying side and Aera Group on the selling side in the DAO IPCI blockchain ecosystem with IT support of Airlab.
The Verified Carbon Units acquired by Russian Carbon Fund are intended to offset carbon footprint in Russia and internationally, by airline passengers in particular.
The DAO IPCI team of blockchain and environmental markets experts has been developing the blockchain-based CO2 exchange over the last year, aiming to ensure more transparency, integrity and lower transaction costs for buyers and sellers of carbon credits and other environmental mitigation outcomes.
The initiative aims at raising and catalysing pre-compliance and voluntary CO2 offsets demand and support the emergence of a Russian carbon market.
Aera Group and the Russian Carbon Fund also announced a partnership to provide Russian buyers with direct and long-term access to high-quality African carbon credits.
Anton Galenovich, chairman of the council of the Russian Carbon Fund, comments: “The platform developers’ idea is to provide common space for fair competition, provide early crediting, offsetting carbon footprint opportunities for the companies, and break the barriers dividing locations and types of high quality mitigation outcomes.
“Russian market mechanisms are in the trial pilot phase and may have significant offsetting capacity on the supply and the demand side in near future. Russian carbon credits developed and assured under strict requirements of the Integrated Program for Climate Initiatives are still under verification process to be issued in DAO IPCI ecosystem.”
Fabrice Le Saché, Aera Group executive chairman, adds: “We strongly believe that Russia will become a key player of the international climate transition in the years to come. Beyond environment, this is a matter of economic competition and performance as it drives innovation. We are pleased to pioneer a market and a technology at same time. We expect to connect Russian corporates with charismatic African CO2 offset projects yielding mitigation and adaptation benefits.”
DAO IPCI is a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation operating, sustaining and developing the Integral Platform for Climate Initiatives, smart contracts and blockchain technology-based independent ecosystem designed for carbon market instruments, including carbon compliance units’, carbon-offset credits, other environmental mitigations credits, environmental assets, rights and liabilities registration, accounting and transaction data.
The DAO IPCI project is implemented with the technological support of Microsoft Russia, on Azure Blockchain as a service cloud platform.